However, in addition to the official principles of a company or organization, there is another, less formal and more covert know-how that has a similar impact on the effectiveness of implemented activities as any agreed procedures – the so-called tribal knowledge. In today’s article, we’ll focus on tribal knowledge in the organizational context. We’ll show its benefits, and limitations as well as ways to extract it to enhance your business performance.
Tribal knowledge refers to informal, practical information, skills or tips that are accumulated within an organization or community, but not in documented or widely available form. It is typically passed on verbally during interactions between individual group members.
In the case of business, tribal knowledge develops as a result of experiences, practices, beliefs and habits within a group of people, often based on long-term relationships and cooperation. It can involve, among other things, nuances, unusual cases, complex problems, valuable solutions or practical tricks that members of an organization acquire in the course of their work and interactions with others (e.g., in customer relations).
Informal and undocumented information frequently shapes an organization’s practices, decisions and performance to a similar degree as official news. Here, we should point out that they primarily involve ways of dealing with unusual or complex issues not listed in formal documents, which can help resolve difficult situations quickly and efficiently. At the same time, they facilitate workflow and affect the quality of products delivered or services provided. Additional benefits associated with tribal knowledge include:
While there is no doubt that tribal knowledge – since it contains context not available in official documents – is extremely valuable, it comes with certain limitations. The most crucial involve:
One of the project and team management tools to obtain such tribal knowledge in your company is Firmbee. With its check-in features, you can create recurring and automated questions to send to your team members (all of them, or just a select few). Such questions will help you in keeping up with the experiences and insights of individual employees and enable you to create an updated knowledge base.
Managing tribal knowledge is a key challenge for organizations that want to make effective use of the informal intelligence accumulated within teams. In this regard, measures such as implementing mentoring programs (to transfer experience from senior employees), organizing regular meetings and discussions (to ensure that information can be transferred, e.g. through case studies), or looking for ways to document (e.g. in the form of FAQs, case studies or internal guides), among others, will certainly help.
However, all activities implemented must aim to create a culture of sharing and appreciation of the diversity of skills and perspectives. Only in this way will the company be able to effectively use the types available, while minimizing the risks involved.
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Author: Nicole Mankin
HR manager with an excellent ability to build a positive atmosphere and create a valuable environment for employees. She loves to see the potential of talented people and mobilize them to develop.
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